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"Moreover, you scorned our people, and compared the Albanese to sheep, and according to your custom think of us with insults. Nor have you shown yourself to have any knowledge of my race. Our elders were Epirotes, where this Pirro came from, whose force could scarcely support the Romans. This Pirro, who Taranto and many other places of Italy held back with armies. I do not have to speak for the Epiroti. They are very much stronger men than your Tarantini, a species of wet men who are born only to fish. If you want to say that Albania is part of Macedonia I would concede that a lot more of our ancestors were nobles who went as far as India under Alexander the Great and defeated all those peoples with incredible difficulty. From those men come these who you called sheep. But the nature of things is not changed. Why do your men run away in the faces of sheep?"

Letter from Skanderbeg to the Prince of Taranto ▬ Skanderbeg, October 31 1460

28.08.2009 @ 09:25 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The president and prime minister of Kosovo have walked out of talks with EU representatives in the first serious bilateral rift since Kosovo declared independence last year.
The meeting in Pristina on Thursday (27 August) was designed to soothe ethnic Albanian fears over a new police co-operation agreement between the EU's police mission to Kosovo, EULEX, and Serbia's interior ministry
The co-operation protocol will help EULEX and Serb police share information on cross-border organised crime and is a pre-condition for Serbia to obtain visa free travel to the EU in 2010.
Kosovo leaders said that EULEX' direct dealing with Serbia undermines their attempt to establish a sovereign state.
"The Kosovo leaders reiterated in the meeting their firm position against the protocol and emphasised that from today any debate and discussion on this issue is completely closed. Kosovo does not take any obligation and responsibility for issues which it has not decided in a sovereign way," the office of Kosovo president Fatmir Sejdiu said.
The statement came out after Mr Sejdiu and Kosovo prime minister Hashim Thaci broke off talks with EULEX chief Yves de Kermabon and the EU's civilian representative to Kosovo, Pieter Feith.
The police protocol has stoked anger in the majority ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo.
On Wednesday, the ethnic Albanian Vetevendosja ("self-determination") movement attacked EULEX vehicles in events leading to 21 arrests.
"We want the Republic of Kosovo to join the EU. But what we need are economic experts, doctors, scientists to help us develop. Not EU policemen to rule over us in a completely unaccountable way," Vetevendosja leader Albin Kurti told EUobserver.
Mr Kurti said Serbian police were involved in the killings of ethnic Albanian civilians in the 1990s: "They are criminals. They killed 12,000 people and only a dozen or so of those responsible are in prison."
Serbia's minister for Kosovo, Goran Bogdanovic, gave provocative comments to the Serbian Vecernje novosti newspaper on Thursday.
"With this document [the police protocol], the EU is confirming Serbia's integrity even on the areas that our country does not have full control over," he said.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February 2008 with the backing of the EU institutions and the US. Twenty two out of 27 EU states have recognised its sovereignty. But Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia and Romania have not.
The EU visa free deal will cut along ethnic lines in the Balkans.
The agreement is to embrace the majority Orthodox Christian countries, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. But it will exclude the majority Muslim Kosovo and Albania.
Bosnian Muslims will also be stuck with visa requirements. But most Bosnian Serbs will benefit from the EU deal because they hold Serbian passports.

In a poll conducted by NewKosovaReport, interviewing 4504 citizens in Kosovo, 92 percent have expressed disapproval of the EULEX mission in Kosovo, 96% strong disapproval of EULEX's attempt to sign a protocol with Serbia, while 86 percent strongest disapproval ever recorded of the international civilian presence in the country.
The poll was conducted in 7 largest cities of Kosovo and included people of ages 20 to 65.
Asked on whether they approve the work of EULEX in Kosovo, 92 percent responded negatively, 2 percent positively and only 2 neutral. An interesting pattern of response must be noted. Majority of the participants expressed their doubts and some even anger at EULEX's double standards such as sabotaging the construction of the displaced people, violating the constitution or recognizing at its convenience, while letting the cmriminals throwing grenades and bombs, being untouchable at Kroi I Vitakut.
A retired professor at University of Prishtina we surveyed said: "Just read EU's today statement. Obviously, their main concern is vandals, supposedly us Albanians, while those Serbs in the northern in Kroi I Vitakut who use bombs, grenades and continue to terrorize those who want to return home are not a concern to even think or mention. Not a sentence or let a long a paragraph can be found within those lines. They are failures. If our fate is depended on them, we would be extinct, today" expressing his anger the emeritus professor.
Asked on whether they approve the recent protest of Self-Determination on destroying 25 EULEX cars, the polls shows that 89 percent of ages 20 to 30 said they not only support but they would likely join a such action in the near future, some revealing that they have even joined the Self-Determination Movement, expressing despair on government and anger and demand of the removal of the international civilian presence in the country. While the group age between 30 to 45 the support ranged at 71 percent. While 45 to 65, ranged at 63 percent.
The polls shows that 96 percent believe that EULEX does not have the mandate to sign a such protocol and 78 percent said would likely use different forms of protest to prevent such agreement taking place, demanding immediate termination of EULEX mission in Kosovo. "If the Parliament won't do it, we, the people of Kosovo will do it," said one participant.
Several political parties, civic groups and media have requested an immediate review of the EULEX mission in Kosovo.
International diplomats in Prishtina have agreed that the EULEX's move to sign a such protocol constituted a clear misuse of its presence at Kosovo's expense.
EULEX has been plagued with troubles from the start, mostly originating from the EU's lack of unity and dysfunctional foreign policy in over Kosovo despite its protests of neutrality.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Kosovo emphasized that Kosovo Government is the decision maker, while the Parliament Speaker warned that EULEX has no mandate to sign such protocol and the Parliament shall review its mission in due course.
Meanwhile the EU Foreign Ministers did not explicitly express the support for the protocol leaving the option open to further discuss it.

This happens when our politicians sign any agreement, and they have no clue what they are signing, or they just sign for the heck of it, just so later to come and pinch them in the "but". Who pays the price, always our people who have to deal forever and ever!

"I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell."~Harry S. Truman

Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and sociologist Slavoj Zizek tells BIRN`s Life in Kosovo show that conflict in the Balkans could be avoided with an exchange of territory in the Balkans to avoid further conflict.

Q: In your book, The Absolute Fragile, you developed your thesis that here Albanians are supported as long as they remain victims, depoliticized subjects, and so on. If they want to move abroad they become toxic subjects, if they move inside they become fundamentalist, terrorists, radicals, and so on. Why is this so?

Zizek: First, I don’t think that there is anything specific concerning Kosovo in this.

This is just a general attitude of disgustingly well-meaning, Western charity, human rights liberals who like the others as far as they are passive victimized “others”. The moment when the others want to take the fate into their own hands, they are immediately suspected of, not just nationalism, fundamentalism, and so on.

This is the general feature of today’s global capitalism, as I often repeated in my books, the old joke that today we like to have the products deprived of their poisonous substance.

We have coffee without caffeine, sugar without sugar, Coca-Cola without caffeine, beer without alcohol. The West wants decaffeinated Kosovo. Here we are all paying the price. But it’s not only this. Did you noticed one of the nice paradoxes, logical paradoxes, where you can see how Yugoslavia was a totally hysterical space, was that each nation, except you, each nation in order to justify itself, tried to present to the West our own ego-ideal, as the best way to civilization against the barbarian others?

Serbs were all the time telling to Western media, “We are still the Christian West and you are basically and practically an outpost of Al Qaeda, or whatever you want, you and the Bosnians.” But then it goes on. This is what I like. Croats said, “we are civilised Western Catholics, Serbs are orthodox. We are the last fortress wall.” We, Slovenians, we played the same game too. We said, “We are not Balkans at all, we are middle Europe.”

Q: In Kosovo, we have relied on America who brought the NATO intervention and then independence. What will our reliance on America bring us in the future?

Zizek: First, I am not a hypocritical leftist deploring you, sorry, accusing you of betraying the left, you sold yourself to American imperialism and so on. Well, where was the European left to help? So, from the pragmatic point of view, when you are in deep trouble you will take even the devil’s hand if it will pull you out. All I am telling you is that there is a price.

The price is what? A certain kind of peace is now imposed on you. And this is clear to me. One look at the map tells you this, that you are tightly controlled and given little room for movement and this geopolitical constellation, it’s not a good foundation for long-term stability.

There are too many nonsenses. There is the unclear status of Macedonia, then it’s a problem between you and Albania. It’s little bit stupid to have two countries, the same ethnic group, the same nation.
Q: Basically you are saying that we should unite with Albania?

Zizek: I am not saying in the sense of a utopian idea unifying [the nation]. I am saying this kind of clarifying the situation, not clarifying in this ethnic cleansing, but clarifying in the sense of introducing a more logical order.

I will be open and say something that you won’t like. Again, here, maybe foreign help is needed to prevent explosions. Why not give a little bit of Mitrovica to Serbia, and they can give you a bit of the south-west of Serbia, where you are there with Macedonia, Albania? Wouldn’t that be a more logical space? And I think that this is not unsolvable.

Q: What is the best way for Kosova to find its way out of being an international protectorate?

Zizek: Act brutally and pragmatically. Simply, do things which maybe will generate some resistance. For example, I would simply open borders with Albania de facto. You know that the West likes to have open borders. OK, haha, here we have an open border. A situation that then will enforce what you want.

The second thing is now, it’s important for you to focus, not on these quick profits, the danger is the way I see it. You know, like your Prime Minister Hashim Thaci used a metaphor that Kosovo is a child and it is growing, getting big and fat, but the danger is that in 20 years from now it will not be a ridiculous big fat child [laughing] but it’s still a child.

The thing for you to do, maybe it will sound reactionary even, but I think the best is to create a strong state apparatus. This is so important. Create serious ministries, good administrators; you should do exactly the opposite of what we all feared under communism and we were saying against bureaucratic socialism. You need a good state bureaucracy.

"I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell."~Harry S. Truman